Keeping the fight fair – busting myths around Denuvo Anti-Cheat
If you’ve ever played a PC game that has a competitive element, you’ve probably played against a cheater – whether it’s that player flying around at an impossible speed, or that bullet that felt a little too precise. Cheating has become one of the largest issues that game publishers are facing today.
Since the beginning, Denuvo has set out to build a best-of-breed solution to bring fairness back to gaming. We worked together with your favorite major game publishers and studios, who field-tested our Anti-Cheat solution and have put it through rigorous testing to identify any issues that might be detrimental to gameplay.
As Denuvo Anti-Cheat grows in popularity, we’re seeing a lot of discussion around how our anti-cheat operates. We’d like to address some of the concerns expressed by the community and detail how we’re working tirelessly along with top publishers to detect cheaters, helping to create a safe, secure and fun environment for players.
We know that our detection methods produce accurate results and do not have a perceivable effect on performance. Here are some of the most common myths surrounding Denuvo’s solutions:
1. Denuvo Anti-Tamper, Denuvo Anti-Cheat, it’s all the same!
Denuvo Anti-Tamper makes it harder for pirates to crack existing digital rights management platforms like Steam, Origin and the Epic Game Store. Anti-Tamper does not prevent game modding, and it is easy to cheat even in anti-tamper protected games. Denuvo Anti-Cheat provides real-time detection of aimbots, overlays and maphacks that use drivers, hypervisors and other common cheat methods. It’s a game protection software solution that protects Esports and multiplayer games from cheating through detection only. The two solutions don’t have much overlap.
2. It’s monitoring and collecting my data 24/7!
Denuvo Anti-Cheat is active only when your game is running competitive game modes, and it does not collect any personally identifiable information. It does collect information on how the OS interacts with the game and sends it to our Amazon-hosted servers for cheat detection. That is all it does. Denuvo Anti-Cheat only detects cheats – game publishers then decide how to respond to the offenders.
3. It’s a malware, rootkit, spyware or otherwise malicious code
Denuvo’s driver has been certified by renowned kernel security researchers, completed both rigorous whitebox and blackbox audits and was penetration-tested by independent cheat developers. Unlike other existing anti-cheats, Denuvo Anti-Cheat does not stream shell code from the web, meaning that, if compromised, attackers can’t send arbitrary malware to gamers’ machines. Denuvo Anti-Cheat makes no effort to hide itself, asks for your permission to be installed and can be uninstalled in one click.
4. You don’t need kernel-mode.
We understand running the driver component in kernel-mode can raise concerns, and that some of you want to know more about the tech behind Denuvo Anti-Cheat. Kernel-level access is needed in order to effectively detect cheaters and is why the world most popular games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Valorant and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds use kernel-mode anti-cheat solutions. There are many risks associated with kernel-mode drivers, like blue screens; if we could avoid running in the kernel to offer an effective anti-cheat, we would.
5. Your anti-cheat affects performance! It causes the blue screen of death!
The Denuvo Anti-Cheat solution does not interfere with the normal OS operation and based on our experience and independent testing, it does not cause errors or reduce stability to system performance. More often than not, performance issues are related to other code updates that are usually launched with the anti-cheat and not directly related to the program itself. Running any additional software, like an anti-cheat, requires system resources, but the resources used by Denuvo Anti-Cheat are less intensive than having a blank tab open in your internet browser.
Here at Denuvo, we are players just like you, and understand the concerns around installing programs with kernel-mode access. Our goal is to help publishers protect the competitive integrity of the game without compromising the personal privacy of the players, while making sure gamers have an enjoyable, fair and fun opportunity to play the games they love. As always, please continue to give feedback via our social channels and players forums. While we might not be able to directly respond, you can rest assured that these messages are being read and relayed to the team.
For technical or corporate inquiries, feel free to reach out to via anticheat@denuvo.com
